Before Facebook there was “Surfbook”—now pay up

A well-funded patent-holding company seeks a royalty on the "Like" button.

A patent-holding company, working together with the widow and family of a Dutch computer programmer, has sued Facebook for infringing two patents. The plaintiff, Rembrandt Social Media (part of Rembrandt IP), says its patents came from a social networking pioneer who created an early "online diary" program, and it asks the social-networking giant to pay unspecified royalties.

The complaint [PDF] spins an interesting tale of a now-deceased Dutch programmer, Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, who was a "pioneer in the development of user-friendly Web technologies," according to the complaint filed earlier this week.

"He really created the concept of a diary on the Internet," Rembrandt's lawyer, Tom Melsheimer, told Ars. "To describe it in a general way, he had the notion of being able to publish and share information with a select group of people and the ability to link in other types of information. It was the beginnings of what we would say is social networking."

Van Der Meer founded a company called Aduna and started work on implementing the ideas in his two patents, numbers 6,289,362 and 6,415,316. During that time he registered "www.surfbook.com" but it isn't clear what, if anything, he did with it. In any case, Van Der Meer wasn't able to finish his work, as he passed away in June 2004.

Facebook didn't pop up on the scene until 2003, but "it bears a remarkable resemblance, both in terms of its functionality and technical implementation, to the personal web page diary that Van Der Meer had invented years earlier," the complaint states. Facebook lets its users arrange personal information, as well as third-party content, in a chronological format; it allows the user to share "specific diary entries with a selected group of people, such as the user's friends, through the use of user-settable privacy levels." And Facebook is powered by advertising revenue, a business model that's specifically described in the '316 patent.

Finally, Facebook allows third-party content to be moved from other websites to its own via a "share" or "like" button—again, an invention that the complaint claims Van Der Meer thought of first.

Also accused of infringing one of the patents is a 47-employee company called AddThis. The suit is filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, one of the fastest patent dockets in the country, where AddThis is located.

The lawsuit also claims Facebook knew about the Van Der Meer patents, since one of them is cited in a Facebook patent issued in 2012.

Patent-holding companies suing big Internet companies isn't unusual. About 20 patent lawsuits were filed against Facebook in 2012 alone—only one, Yahoo v. Facebook, was filed by a company that could be considered any kind of competitor.

"I would distinguish Rembrandt from other companies that buy up patents," said Melsheimer. "Rembrandt is pretty committed to the idea of finding inventors that have a compelling story to tell, and a patent that is important or core to some widely used technology." At trial, Melsheimer expects Van Der Meer's widow and some of his former colleagues to testify about the importance of his invention.

Rembrandt is also a very successful patent-holding company; it was founded in 2004 and by 2008 had raised over $150 million to pursue patents it thought looked like good investments. That allowed it to wrest a $41 million verdict from contact-lens maker Ciba Vision in 2008. That same year, Rembrandt claimed to have patent rights to both the digital-TV standard and the DOCSIS cable-modem standard, and it was accused of pretending to be in the cable-modem business itself in order to gain leverage in that case.

Rembrandt has always been able to hire top-tier legal talent to prosecute its cases; it's represented in this case by Fish & Richardson, the largest patent-centric law firm in the country.

Of course, Facebook never claimed to be the first social network. It was preceded by MySpace, Friendster, and others. It has always been the execution of ideas, not patent rights on ideas, that has caused social-media websites to rise or fall. The relevance of whatever happened at surfbook.com to modern social networking seems, to the casual observer, to be nil. Despite that, Van Der Meer's heirs—and the anonymous owner of Rembrandt IP—can now claim they have monopoly rights to an "online diary" until the year 2021.

"The way the patent laws work, and have worked for 200 years, is that when someone else uses it—whether intentionally or unintentionally—they owe a reasonable royalty," said Melsheimer. "It's not necessarily a function of bad intent or malicious planning. The notion that the original inventor didn't succeed in commercializing the invention is, legally speaking, not relevant."

I think prior art should get Facebook off the hook. Let's see... people have been liking things since there have been people. Buttons have been around for a few hundred years. So that should cover the Like button. Diaries have been around for a long time too, definitely predating the internet. And as for "links to multimedia in a diary", I've seen diaries where people cut pictures out of books/magazines they like and paste them in their diary. I think it's called scrapbooking. BAM! Case closed. I should be a lawyer.

I think prior art should get Facebook off the hook. Let's see... people have been liking things since there have been people. Buttons have been around for a few hundred years. So that should cover the Like button. Diaries have been around for a long time too, definitely predating the internet. And as for "links to multimedia in a diary", I've seen diaries where people cut pictures out of books/magazines they like and paste them in their diary. I think it's called scrapbooking. BAM! Case closed. I should be a lawyer.

"Rembrandt is pretty committed to the idea of finding inventors that have a compelling story to tell, and a patent that is important or core to some widely used technology."

Melsheimer seems to think this makes them different, but that's just a nice-sounding way of describing what all these patent trolls do. Find some patent that they can claim is central to a widely used technology, so they can sue the bejeezus out of everyone using it.

Again diary + internet = something new is just asinine. This is basically +internet to various things that were traditionally not on the internet. If I build a model plane on my desk at home, its not protected by any patents. Does that mean building models in the ocean, or in space, or on another planet, it suddenly becomes some revolutionary new 'thing' I can patent? God I need a idontwantoliveonthisplanetanymore.jpg.

Personally I'm tired of the patent lawsuit stories that are rarely followed up with consequential stories because they never go anywhere. At first it was interesting reading about a very watered down version of patent law (something I could thankfully comprehend), but then it just turned into more of the same. Some dude with a shell company suing a huge company for infringing on something that could have been brought up ages ago - but instead they wait until their greed couldn't hold it any longer.

I mean, How much you want to bet the prosecutor won't gain a nickel? Of the past dozens of patent stories, I don't remember one that had a follow up where the lawsuit went anywhere meaningful. The comments all talk about patent reform, but nothing is seriously in the works as of right now. What are interesting are the articles that actually discuss current debates and/or legislation regarding patent reform. What's also interesting are the ongoing patent battles between large companies that actually affect product output (Samsung v Apple).

I just remember the article that shifted my perspective on whether I should be reading them.

Personally I'm tired of the patent lawsuit stories that are rarely followed up with consequential stories because they never go anywhere.

Patent suits against big companies like Google or Apple often fail because those companies can afford to fight. Frivolous suits against small shops, however, can be quite damaging even if the suit wouldn't hold up in trial. The goal is to intimidate people into settling with non-disclosure agreements so many of these patent shakedowns don't reach the press. Hence, unfortunately, the ones that get that most attention tend to be the ones that fail because they were overambitious and attacked wealthy companies like Facebook or Google.

... Of the past dozens of patent stories, I don't remember one that had a follow up where the lawsuit went anywhere meaningful. ...

unfortunately, most of the billions of dollars paid out to patent trolls come by way of secret, confidential settlements - and never see an open courtroom.

if the patent system is so royally f'ed up, i don't get why you have a Sad about there being articles on Ars that highlight the various ways that patent trolling screws with the marketplace. especially considering that they have many articles on the furtive blurps of temporary interest in the subject that spurt out of legislators as a sadly rare occurrence.

unfortunately, most of the billions of dollars paid out to patent trolls come by way of secret, confidential settlements - and never see an open courtroom.

if the patent system is so royally f'ed up, i don't get why you have a Sad about there being articles on Ars that highlight the various ways that patent trolling screws with the marketplace. especially considering that they have many articles on the furtive blurps of temporary interest in the subject that spurt out of legislators as a sadly rare occurrence.

So what, you want to read the same story over and over again Meta? That way you really get a feel for how horrible the patent system is after not changing since the last time you read it? Why not just wait until a story comes out about the patent system actually changing?

Patent suits against big companies like Google or Apple often fail because those companies can afford to fight. Frivolous suits against small shops, however, can be quite damaging even if the suit wouldn't hold up in trial. The goal is to intimidate people into settling with non-disclosure agreements so many of these patent shakedowns don't reach the press. Hence, unfortunately, the ones that get that most attention tend to be the ones that fail because they were overambitious and attacked wealthy companies like Facebook or Google.

Makes sense - though it still doesn't answer why people find these articles interesting.

What would be the legal implications of responding to a lawsuit like this with by shipping a manilla envelope back to the law firm that contained a since page document with the words "Eat a dick" and then ignoring all further notices or mailings?

What would be the legal implications of responding to a lawsuit like this with by shipping a manilla envelope back to the law firm that contained a since page document with the words "Eat a dick" and then ignoring all further notices or mailings?

See, this patent is invalid because of blogging. Or else all blogging software and services are in violation of this patent. I started blogging before the term "blogging" ever came into existence, so maybe I should get the patent instead. I remember back in the day when I first heard the term "weblogging/web logging" (sp?). I was like, "What? Ordinary people use UNIX and check Apache httpd access logs??!!"

What would be the legal implications of responding to a lawsuit like this with by shipping a manilla envelope back to the law firm that contained a since page document with the words "Eat a dick" and then ignoring all further notices or mailings?

Very roughly, they'd likely file against you anyway. Then when you didn't show up to defend yourself (didn't read your mail about court dates) there'd be a summary judgement against you.

Eventually, sheriffs would show up up to seize your assets. I know someone who tried to deal with a divorce that way. It didn't end well.

Generally I'm totally against patent trolls. I never thought I'd consider one to be anything other than the scum of the earth.

However, Facebook with its dodgy startup, unscrupulous CEO, and its constant attempts to destroy any semblance of user privacy almost, but not quite, have me approving of this particular action.

Don't you just love situational ethics and morals? :-\

Sometimes defending rights and freedoms means doing so despite how others abuse them. Yes, people have a right and freedom to be a douchenozzle. This seems to apply fairly evenly to either side in this case.

I hope they win. The patent system won't be fixed until it's shown to be truly, completely broken, and proved useless to everyone that counts.

No more bandaids, no more pretending, let's rush to to the end as fast as possible.

It's been blatantly obvious that the patent system is a complete farce. Who can fathom what goes on there? Are the examiners truly as stupid as they seem? Are they really as overworked? Is there a deep-rooted corruption at work in a system that was terribly flawed from the start? My experience tells me all of the above, and so long as there is vast amounts of money to be made, by both the trolls and the giant companies with patent war chests, then the charade will continue.

I felt for a long while that the entire human race is such a screwed up group, a reset so catastrophic that we end up back in caves is needed. But then I realized in the N years it would take to climb back up, it'd be just as screwed up again.

For a patent to be valid, there should be an actual implementation and not just a vague idea. He had an idea of a "diary" of some sort. Is this like a blog? Or is this more like a journal? Was this suppose to be public, or a way of me jotting down ideas and storing them on a server. Or, is a server even involved. Maybe the "journal" would be on my computer, but there was some mysterious way I could update it via the Internet.

We never know what his idea was because it was never implemented, just patented.

I wish Facebook would have the cojones that Newegg showed. While FB is far from the top of my list of favorite companies, they do have the deep pockets to fight this. If I were a shareholder I'd actually support it-while the quarter's profits might get hammered dropping the hammer on this one should help prevent future suits. But of course the Street is almost as screwed up as the patent system, so that won't have a chance o happening.